Bobby Ferguson walks into Federal Court with his lawyer Gerald Evelyn after the jury announced it had reached a verdict in the public corruption trial. / Diane Weiss/Detroit Free Press

Written by

Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

Gerald Evelyn, Bobby Ferguson’s longtime attorney who saw him through two major trials and teared up during closing arguments in the contractor’s recent public corruption trial, will not represent Ferguson in his next legal battle: the bid-rigging retrial.

Evelyn, who suffered a major health setback during Ferguson’s public corruption trial, requested today that he be withdrawn from the bid-rigging case, in which Ferguson and two others are charged with rigging bids to steer a nearly $12-million public housing project contract to Ferguson.

Evelyn stated in court documents that he “does not intend to continue as trial counsel of record for Mr. Ferguson in this matter,” and that his reasons for withdrawing “have been discussed with Mr. Ferguson and he fully consents.”

Ferguson also is facing gun charges in that case for, the government claims, possessing weapons he was not supposed to have following a felony conviction for pistol-whipping an employee. A new indictment was filed in the case today, in which the government dropped a complicated financial structuring charge and added an extra gun charge.

On May 21, he is scheduled to be retried in the bid-rigging case that ended in a mistrial last June when the jury deadlocked.

Multiple jurors told the Free Press that the deadlock was due to a lone holdout juror who in the end refused to deliberate. The Free Press later discovered that that juror never disclosed that her husband had a cocaine conviction, that her day care was under investigation, or that the couple had filed for bankruptcy – all information that likely would have raised red flags for prosecutors.